Most companies provide resources to employees to maximize their productive potential. For example, in a modern office environment, an employee may be provided with a workstation and a computer that is equipped with a variety of hardware and software. The employee may also have network access to additional hardware and software. The employee may be provided with access permissions as necessary to utilize resources such as email accounts, fax machines, printers, and network drive space. The employee may be further equipped with resources such as a telephone, building access badge, keys, cell phones, and so forth.
Although a variety of software products are available for assigning and scheduling “human resources,” i.e. employee time and expertise that is needed to accomplish a complex project, such products neglect the tools employees may need to extend their productivity. Instead, such products simply assume that a company has provided its employees with the tools they need to be as effective as possible.
Meanwhile, the resources provided to employees are typically controlled by a diverse set of resource owners. For example, a workstation building access badge may be owned by a building maintenance department, while a computer is owned by an Information Technology (IT) department. A telephone may be owned by a human resources department, while access permissions to various computing resources may be owned by the business units that maintain and manage such resources. It may fall on a new employee, the employee's manager, or a person with appropriate knowledge of company practices to equip employees with the resources they need.
In a large company, resource owners become spread out and develop their own unique protocols for accepting and reviewing resource requests. Some require an approval from a manager or other person of appropriate authority. Some require information from the requesting employee, such as the employee's employee ID number, username and password, social security number, and so forth. Satisfying the demands of the various resource owners in order to acquire all the resources an employee needs becomes a difficult and time consuming task that presents an efficiency drag on the business.
In light of the above mentioned difficulties, systems and methods are needed for fast identification of the resources employees should have, and for providing resources from a disparate group of resource owners. This would increase efficiency as employees enter, leave, and transform within a company.